For several sound reasons, political as well as economic, the purchase of a new car in this new environment is arguably a very bad idea.
For more on that, see here.
For several equally – and corollary – sound reasons, now is an excellent time to buy an old car and even better, an old truck – as friends of mine just did.
Their choice – a mid-1990s full-size Dodge Ram truck with a mechanically injected Cummins turbodiesel straight six – was perhaps the best possible choice. First, because it is a truck and so capable of performing work in addition to mere transportation. Being able to haul – and pull – in addition to carrying are virtues cars lack.
Second, because it is a truck and so capable of traversing roads and dealing with conditions that cars aren’t built to handle. In the Third World future that appears to be intended, roads may become impassable due to lack of repair; this is already becoming a problem in many areas and is likely to get worse as the tax cows stop giving milk and the takers of the “milk” use the proceeds for their own needs.
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A truck will not only enable you to get home – and to wherever you need to go – it makes it feasible to make a home where it is difficult if not impossible for those without a truck to go. A less-accessible home is a safer home, ipso facto. It may also make it a less expensive home in that a hard-to-reach home is harder to sell to the city people currently fleeing the civilizational devastation imposed by the policies most of them supported.
The farther you can get away from them – and out of their reach – the better.
Fourth, a truck is strong. It will have a heavy steel frame built out of literal steel girders that you can attach cables and winches and hooks to and which can take a load without bending. Steel frames are also much easier to fix in the field if that ever becomes necessary. A steel frame can be pulled back into shape with a come-along and a big tree; sections can be cut and welded if they rust.
And it takes a long time for rust to become a structural issue with a steel frame, because of the thickness of the steel itself.
Unibody cars are also generally made of steel but it is of thinner gauge – to save weight, the main reason for cars no longer being built with separate steel frames onto which the body is mounted – and so it rusts through more quickly and because the whole car is literally welded together it is more difficult to repair when damaged and also more susceptible to crippling damage from relatively minor impacts. A deer strike that might dimple a truck’s fender (that can be pulled back into shape or unbolted and replaced with a new one) might total a car – or at least, damage it sufficiently as to render it unusable.
Trucks also have bumpers made of steel – not “covers” made of plastic. Bumpers can be bumped. And used to bump things. A bumper can serve to part the peacefully protesting seas far more effectively than a plastic “cover.”
